One thing I haven’t done with the stats yet is count up the number of photos accounted for by different types of animal. I suspect that over the last 1,953 days, ducks will win, probably just ahead of dogs. Why? Because Hebden Bridge has plenty of them, and look — they’re basically photogenic.
Nice light, but not a very exciting picture — then again it was not a very exciting day. I did quite enough over the last 48 hours thank you very much. Anyway, happy Friday — hope you have a good weekend.
Quite a Hebden-bound period of the blog — in the 20 days since we got back from North Wales, 13 shots have been here (and five of the rest in Manchester). Not so bad I guess but it’s time to get out a bit more. Still, I feel happy that the period signs off with a good shot, this duck and the evening light came together just so — and here’s a sign of where lens flare is integral to what I wanted from the picture.
Back home, and from one of the world’s major historical waterways (the Tagus) to another (the Hebden Water) that is maybe not as significant, but still as photogenic in its own way. We could have done with better weather though — as has been true for two months — which may explain the expressions here.
On a grey day spent entirely working at home it’s always helpful for the photography when one of the local herons turns up in the Hebden Water just below my house. They are not particularly willing models — this one saw me a few seconds after I got this shot and flew off — perhaps that explains why it looks a bit rueful here, its neck tucked in, shoulders hunched. That’s why I’m calling it “Humph”, I can imagine that coming out of its mouth in a speech bubble.
Although a chillier day today than it has been, I think we can still say that spring is here. Not sure whether these two were feeding themselves, or the ducks in the river below their feet (and cropped out of shot), but either way the title still applies. Why the black and white? Why not? Sometimes the colours just don’t work out so well.
It’s been a VERY uneventful few days. At least this guy gave me something unusual to depict; the Boxing Day floods have provoked some vague dredging of the Hebden Water. Dredging is fine, but it just pushes the flooding downstream; what one really needs is attention to how fast the rainwater falls off the watershed, prompting (ideally) the planting of trees and the development of other facilities that keep the water uphill rather than pushing it down the valleys, only that doesn’t meet the needs of rich landowners.
It could be sharper and it ain’t gonna win any wildlife photography contests, but I’m glad this baby was fishing in the river this morning when I went shopping down in the town, because otherwise I was home all day working and there was nothing to see…. But herons are always good for a shot. Handsome creatures. That neck-spring-and-dagger-beak combination must be a fish’s worst nightmare.
This platform over the Hebden Water has always been there, at least since I’ve been living here. But recently a project began that seemed to be building on it. One story was that this was to be car parking, but I’ve also heard that there was going to be a house built on it. Either way, the state it is in now reflects what happened on December 26th, in the floods, when the river peaked above the surface of the platform, leaving it smashed up and littered with debris (much of which has since been cleared).
The point is that this is exactly the kind of situation where you might think planning permission had been granted without due consideration. Flooding, and damage from flooding, isn’t just about heavy rainfall — it’s also about damn-fool planning. At least this happened before someone blithely bought and moved into this putative house. But who knows, perhaps the project has not yet been abandoned.
A lot of rain overnight, and the Hebden Water was today as high as I have seen it since the floods of June/July 2012. But most — if not absolutely all — of the town was spared damage; the rain stopped just in time. Let’s hope there isn’t more before it has had time to go down a bit.
Being 42 